A niche within a niche: slow travel
Go low & slow with Kate Cummings By Lisa TE Sonne, Editor-at-Large
“There was no one else there. We felt like the only people in the world. When you looked around, there was just nature and mountains and glaciers and lakes and no one else. Oh, so beautiful and magical. Like a different planet. This memory will always stick with me,” shares Kate Cummings, from England, about climbing as high as she could on Monte Fitz Roy in the winter cold of July in Patagonia, Argentina. To improve her fluency in French and Spanish, Cummings lived and worked in Paris and in Argentina for six months each, between her years at Exeter University, as part of her selfplanned integration of slow travel with her education. While in Argentina, she had seen enticing photos of the Fitz Roy area in warm weather, but she didn’t want to wait months, only to be sharing the experience with crowds. Instead, she chose to visit the area in the low season, as a part of her “slow travel” plan.
Incan culture from the guides as they trekked past ruins and temples in the challenging Andes.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Cummings admitted, Cummings says there are two kinds of slow travel. One is “but one of the best things. We earned it. I think I appreciated where “you don’t drop into a city and then you’re out that day. Machu Picchu and the Incas so much more and had You sit and you engage with the locals, and you spend weeks in more insights.” one place and get to know your environment and the culture.”
“On the other hand,” she adds, “slow travel can be avoiding the use of planes, and going by bus or by train just to see the landscape as you travel through it, instead of just travelling over it.”
Low Season Traveller
Machu Picchu, the slow way
40
She took the slow travel approach steps further, by walking when it came to seeing Machu Picchu in the Andes, a bucketlist classic visited by more than a million people a year. Instead of taking the train full of tourists up to this iconic Peruvian site, she hiked. She joined a small group with local guides and trekked for five days on the Inca Trail, the same route the Incas themselves had walked centuries ago. She slept under the same stars as the Incas. Saw the same mountains. Followed the same paths. On the way to the Sun Gate entrance of the famous destination, she learned about
Quality time in the Galapagos
The Galapagos Islands, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off the mainland of Ecuador, is another South American destination coveted among curious travellers who want to experience the earth’s wonders in person. “Most people see the Galapagos by taking a cruise ship, getting off the boat, seeing some of an island, and then getting back on the boat. I spent my two weeks there based on San Cristobal Island volunteering with conservation work, shopping in the local markets, spending time with people who lived there. I was a ‘leaper’.” A leaper, she explained, is someone who signs up with the British program The Leap. The website explains that it provides “volunteering experiences for gap year, midlife and corporate teams across Africa, Asia and South America.” Cummings adds, “It’s great for university students and gap-
